Study Tools

The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck

Analysis of Major Characters

Chapter 1

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.

Man’s Relationship to the Earth

The overarching theme of The Good Earth is
the nourishing power of the land. Throughout the novel, a connection
to the land is associated with moral piety, good sense, respect
for nature, and a strong work ethic, while alienation from the land
is associated with decadence and corruption. Buck’s novel situates
this universal theme within the context of traditional Chinese culture.
Wang Lung, a farmer, has an intimate relationship with the earth
because he produces his harvest through his own labor. In contrast,
the local Hwang family is estranged from the earth because their
wealth and harvests are produced by hired labor. Buck suggests that
Wang Lung’s reverence for nature is responsible for his inner goodness,
as well as for his increasing material success, and that the decadent, wasteful
ways of the wealthy are due to their estrangement from the land.
Buck also suggests throughout the book that while human success
is transitory, the earth endures forever. These ideas about the earth
give the novel its title.

Wealth as a Destroyer of Traditional Values

The basic narrative form of The Good Earth has
an upward trajectory: as Wang Lung’s fortunes rise, he becomes more
decadent and more similar to the amoral Hwang family, whose fall
parallels his own rise. It is the wealth of the Hwangs that enables
them to loosen their ties to the land, hire laborers and spend
their own days in idleness and leisure. In this climate, vice takes
root and thrives, as the Old Master becomes obsessed with debauchery
and the Old Mistress becomes addicted to opium. As Wang Lung becomes wealthier,
he too is able to hire laborers, and he becomes obsessed with women
such as Lotus. He begins to fund his uncle’s opium addiction, and
at last he buys the house of the Hwangs and moves into it. As Wang
Lung’s children grow older, it becomes clear that being raised in
the lap of luxury has severely eroded their own sense of duty to
their father, their respect for the land, and the religious observances
on which Wang Lung and his father base their lives.

In this way, Wang Lung’s life story is a case study of
how traditional values erode under the influence of wealth. But
Buck does not attribute this erosion solely to the corrupting influence
of wealth, or at least not solely to the individual experience
of wealth. The new ideals of Wang Lung’s sons demonstrate the changing
nature of Chinese culture. Buck suggests that the modernization
of China, itself a function of wealth, creates cultural conflicts.

The Oppression of Women in Chinese Culture

Primarily through the character of O-lan, Buck explores
the position of women in traditional Chinese culture, focusing on
the hardships and limitations faced by women, from abuse in childhood
to servitude in adulthood. Although she was a lifelong feminist,
Buck takes a cool, neutral tone toward the oppression of women in China,
choosing to focus on individual experience rather than to make large-scale
political or social claims. She presents in an unbiased manner the
practices of foot-binding, female infanticide, and selling daughters
as slaves, constantly drawing attention to the circumstances that
would impel a woman to commit such actions without ever endorsing
the actions themselves. She also suggests that husbands who take
concubines and work their wives like slaves are not necessarily
cruel men, but people behaving as their society mandates. Her criticism
is directed less toward particular acts committed by individual
characters than toward the larger cultural values that produce and
allow those acts to occur.

Buck’s feminism is implicit in her portrayal of O-lan.
Through O-lan, Buck emphasizes the crucial economic contributions
women make to their families. She also uses O-lan to suggest that,
ironically, the more women are able to help, the less men place
sexual and romantic value on them.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Birth, Death, and the Cycle of Nature

Buck draws parallels between the natural cycle of growth,
death, and regeneration and the rise and fall of human fortune and
human life. When O-lan gives birth to her first two sons, for instance,
she immediately returns to tending the fields, which connects the
creation of human life to the bounty of the earth. Similarly, the droughts,
floods, and famines that ruin the earth’s harvest are metaphorically
linked to death and downfall.

Religion

Wang Lung’s religious observance serves as a measuring
stick of his mindset. When Wang Lung feels a strong connection to
the earth and when his fortunes are good, he is extremely pious
and frequently shows signs of faith in the earth god (as when, for
instance, he burns incense to celebrate his marriage to O-lan).
When his connection to the earth is weak and when his fortunes decline,
he often reacts with bitterness toward the gods and does not outwardly
worship them (as when he refuses to acknowledge their statues when
he moves his family south during the famine). When Wang is in a period
of transition, as when his fortunes are changing, he is often anxious
about the gods and prays frequently to them to preserve his good
luck.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Foot-binding

In traditional Chinese culture, small feet were considered
an attractive female trait. The custom of binding young girls’ feet
to ensure that their feet would remain small was practiced for almost
a thousand years, from the tenth century to the Communist takeover
of mainland China in 1949. Foot-binding was
usually begun when a girl was between the ages of five and seven.
Her mother would fold all her toes except her big toe beneath her
foot, then tightly wrap a thick bandage at least several feet in
length around the foot, so tightly that it actually prevented the
bones from growing and eventually caused the foot to fold in half.
The ideal product of foot-binding was known as a lotus foot, a foot
that, on a grown woman, was not more than three inches long.

Foot-binding was extremely painful, and the pain
lasted throughout a woman’s life—though the pain lessened as she
grew older because her foot was essentially dead. Today, the process would
be considered nothing short of torture: apart from the crushing
pain of retarded bone growth, the process caused the nails of the four
folded toes to grow into the soles of the feet. It also caused an extremely
bad odor as various parts of the foot died. Foot-binding made it
nearly impossible for a woman to walk for any substantial length,
and even a short walk was excruciatingly painful.

Despite the brutality of this practice, it was widespread
throughout China, and by 1900 only the poorest
and most wretched girls did not have their feet bound. Bound feet
were considered so much more attractive than unbound feet that,
without bound feet, it was very difficult for a girl to find a husband.
Throughout The Good Earth, Buck uses foot-binding
as a symbol for the moral depravity of wealth, which would subject
young girls to torture simply to make them more attractive to men.
Attraction to foot-binding also serves as a symbol of Wang Lung’s
longing for wealth and status. He is initially disappointed to discover
that O-lan’s feet are not bound, even though her unbound feet enable
her to work in the fields with him, which dramatically increases
his family’s fortune. Nevertheless, though she was an outspoken
advocate against the practice, Buck takes a very objective, neutral
tone toward foot-binding in The Good Earth, drawing
attention to the cultural tendencies that might make a woman choose
to do such a thing to her daughter. When O-lan binds her own daughter’s
feet, for instance, she is motivated by Wang Lung’s rejection of
her, by his criticism of her “large” unbound feet, and by her desire
for her daughter to have a happy marriage with a husband who loves
her.

The House of Hwang

The House of Hwang is a symbol of wealth, extravagance,
decadence, and downfall throughout the novel, a constant reminder
of wealth’s corrosive effect on morality and long-term success.
As the site of the Old Mistress’s opium addiction, the Old Master’s
whoring, and the young lords’ abuse of slaves, the house is a palpable
sign of disconnection from the land and of narcissistic self-absorption. When
Wang Lung buys the House of Hwang after O-lan’s death, the transaction
is a grim symbol of his own family’s fall from grace, represented
by his children’s decision to sell his land and live in splendor
in the Hwangs’ house.

O-lan’s Pearls

The pearls, which O-lan steals in the revolt in Chapter 14 and
which Wang Lung allows O-lan to keep, are an important symbol of
the love and respect Wang Lung affords his wife. Though O-lan does not
say so, it is clear that she treasures the pearls as proof of her
husband’s regard for her. When Wang Lung takes the pearls away from her
and gives them to the prostitute Lotus, it is as though he is taking away
his love and respect. O-lan is inwardly devastated, and the incident
symbolizes the extent to which wealth and idleness have corrupted
the once admirable Wang Lung.